So, lots of good news.

First off, turned in ON TOP A MOUNTAIN OF FIRE to the editor last week. Beat the deadline by a week (woot) and was very happy with the final product. It was also about 27,000 words longer than planned (oops) and, from the sounds I’m hearing from the editor, might be increasing in size. We shall see. Right not it’s slated as a Fall 2024 release, so I can’t spend a lot of time adding more words. But if more is called for, then I will endeavor.

Instead of basking in my laurels (I bask, I basssssk!), I have decided to immediately dive into my next two projects. They’re both collaborative projects though, so I can work on them both simultaneously. Both are science fiction, which could be a little confusing if they weren’t so vastly different. One is space exploration/opera, while the other is action adventure military SF. Both should be done relatively quick.

While these are being worked on, I’ll be ideating on the next Monster Hunter Memoirs novels (yes, plural). Larry and I will be plotting them out next week when I’m in Utah.

Oh, yeah. Taking my first real vacation in almost ten years. Why Utah? I’ve always wanted to go visit Park City, where the Olympics were held. I want to be a tourist, instead of only going to a place because I have a convention to attend. It’ll be nice. I might be hitting every single B&N in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas to sign copies of MONSTER HUNTER MEMOIRS: FEVER while there. And if they have any copies on shelves still, CHICKS IN TANK TOPS.

The medal (!!!) came in for the 2023 Reader’s Favorite Award this past week for the audiobook of THE EXECUTIONERS, co-authored with Matt Novotny and narrated by Daniel Wisniewski. That thing is heavier than I expected. It’s going to look nice on my wall.

The two anthologies I’m editing are ongoing. Starting to receive stories for both, and so far, so good. I’m really looking forward to seeing the final products for both. I also had an anthology I had a short story in come out recently. IT CAME FROM THE TRAILER PARK: VOLUME 3 was supposed to be about redneck, hillbillies, and rockabilly music themed story but, ah, I suck at following directions sometimes and missed the rockabilly part for my short, I Sold My Soul to the Company Store, a Quintus Fox story. Still, it’s a fun little anthology and you should definitely check it out.

I’ve been slowly pulling back from various social media sites around the web and trying to consolidate everything here. It’s very time-consuming, keeping track of 18 different platforms while trying to write and be productive (and still do the full-time day job as well). The flip side of that, though, is that I need to be more active here–which I forget to do, a lot.

That being said, I’m looking at exploring some more “modern” marketing approaches. Apparently I’m an old fuddy-duddy (we still use that term, right?) for running a website still and not having a booktok. You can make me quit my website when I’m dead, by the way. Social media platforms can cancel you at any time. It’s harder to kill a website. Not impossible, but harder. It’s arguably the one good piece of advice John Scalzi ever gave me:

Social media platforms come and go, but your website remains.